I lived out in the boonies, off the profitable routes of the ice cream trucks. We did, however, have access to a "Candy Man". During the summer of '73 (late August), I was hanging out at one of my neighborhood friend's house for the day. He was telling me about an old guy that drove through the neighborhood every Wednesday selling bread, baked goods and candy out of the back of his blue van. He told me about the Candy Man because he said he sold these cool stickers from his truck, but he couldn't remember what they were called. He tried to find some that he had recently bought to show me what they looked like, but his mother had misplaced them.
It just so happened to be on a Wednesday that we were having this discussion, and the Candy Man rolled into my friend's driveway and honked his horn. I was introduced to the man in the blue van and was in awe of the variety of candy that he had neatly displayed in wide, wooden pull-out drawers that were custom-made for the back of his vehicle. After the formal introduction, my friend instantly spotted some packs of the stickers that he was trying to describe to me earlier... they were bright red packs of Wacky Packages stickers! Once we each bought a handful of packs, I knew exactly what these were.
A girl in my 6th grade homeroom had a bunch of these stickers a few months prior (late April) and I distinctly remember another one of my classmates trying to assemble the Gadzooka puzzle from the checklists mixed in with the pile of stickers that the girl brought to school. After we opened all of our packs from the Candy Man, we noticed that we weren't finding any of the Gadzooka puzzle pieces, or any of the titles that I saw in homeroom in the spring. It was then that we noticed that the checklists indicated that these were the 2nd series of Wacky Packages!
A few weeks after my introduction to the "Candy Man", summer vacation had ended, and we were being carted off back to school. During the first week of school, my neighborhood friend was the center of attention on the bus during the ride to school. His mother had just bought him a full box of the 3rd series of Wacky Packages and he was opening all 48 packs on the way to school!
My friend stopped collecting Wacky Packages somewhere between the 7th and 10th series. I distinctly remember the last Wacky purchase that I made from the Candy Man before he retired... it was a pristine, unopened box of the 13th series during the summer of '75 (mid-July). I continued to collect Wackies up to the 15th series and was not aware of the 16th series until 1984.
A funny side note to this story: the day that I met the Candy Man, my mother asked me where I bought the candy and stickers. She had a fit when I told her that I got them from a man selling candy out of his van! It turns out that the "Candy Man' was Mr. Martin... a member of the choir at the church that my family went to at the time! He had taken on this job after he retired to stay active and earn some extra money.
Sorry for the long read! I could talk about the old days forever!